GLR September-October 2023

deep need for love, which he never found, contributed to his ag gressive, ingratiating personality. One revealing incident hinted at how damaging homopho bia could be. When Kallman attended the legendary 1961 Judy Garland concert at Carnegie Hall, Mallon writes about the mostly gay audience: “ Whatever was broken in these guys was reaching toward and sparking whatever was broken in her in him [Kallman] there had been something broken, but what ever it was had been soldered over, annealed in a way that left it unreaching and unreachable. ” Mallon ’ s investigation of Kallman reads like an autopsy, even though the reader is warned that his story “ is inspired by actual events considerably altered by the author ’ s imagination. ” Yet there ’ s an authenticity that ’ s both frightening and com pelling. Mallon has pierced the heart of darkness at the root of Kallman ’ s soul. Kallman might deserve to be forgotten, but Mallon ’ s portrait of a sad thwarted tragic talent as a sour para ble on ambition is unforgettable.

as gay in the industry, he wore flamboyant clothes and called other gay men “ pansies ” to demean them and to imply that he wasn ’ t oneof them . He sometimes dated women as “ beards, ” such as former child actress Margaret O ’ Brien, to disguise his homosexuality. He smashed actress Dyan Cannon ’ s finger while touring in How To Succeed , because he thought she was upstaging him. Years later, at the Golden Globes Awards, she screamed at him: “ You sick bastard. ” Mallon writes of Kallman that “ ambition stuck out like a cowlick or a horn. ” Mallon manages to create empathy for his subject, though, so we take pity on him as his own worst enemy. Mallon is adept at recreating the showbiz aura and the “ anything goes ” atmosphere of the late ’ 50s to the mid- ’ 60s, as well as the trials and accommodations needed to survive being gay in that milieu. Mallon suggests that Kallman ’ s Brian Bromberger is a freelance writer who works as a staff reporter and arts critic for The Bay Area Reporter .

POETRY BRIEFS ple like a rose ” ), about the taste of a tanger ine, about “ the palm of a man ’ s hand wiping juice / off another man ’ s chin. ” P HILIP G AMBONE SO LONG: Poems by JenLevi tt Four Way Books. 88 pages, $17.95

resolves to take up a “ new kind of noticing. The willingness to risk failure for the possi bility of love. ” SoLong is filled with un fussy poems of candor and insight, drawn with energetic attention to ordinary life. R OSEMARY B OOTH ROMANTIC COMEDY: Poems by James Allen Hall Four Way Books, 89 pages, $17.95. James Allen Hall reminds me that every successful poem is a little triumph, a victory over the vast indifference of the universe. Gay people know better than most that their identities — indeed, their very existence — have had to be forged against an array of forces seemingly aligned against them. Even granted this, however, the poems in Romantic Comedy document an unusually hard-won battle against homophobia, rape, drugs, suicidal impulses, and negative body image. If Hall were not a gifted poet, these poems would simply constitute a litany of horrors. However, in his hands, these adver sities are steadily transformed into moments of quiet, beautifully articulated power. As Hall elegantly puts it in “ Swimming Les son ” : “ I flip my body,/ propel it into the past, into the wake/ of its own trek. ” He also asks, soberingly: “ Is it a love story when the desire is unspeakable? ” In aworld in which, as he posits, desire and destruc tion “ are just different abutments/ of the same bridge, ” this collection, which was se lected by judge Diane Seuss as the winner of the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Po etry, admirably depicts the different shores, as well as the struggle to bridge them. D ALE B OYER

TO THE BOY WHO WAS NIGHT Poems Selected and New by Rigoberto González Four Way Books. 262 pages, $17.95 Rigoberto González ’ s latest book (he ’ s pub lished twenty) is a new and selected volume of his poetry. These are brooding reflections on suffering, sickness, shame, loneliness, and grief; on sexual and romantic frustra tion, family violence, and poverty; on the aches of childhood and “ the sad architecture of abandonment. ” González, who was born in California but grew up in Mexico, writes about hunger — the hunger for food, for jus tice, for dignity, for a voice — and the long ing for tenderness in a world where tenderness seems absent. In a poem like “ In the Village of Missing Fathers, ” he depicts a desolate Mexican landscape where the women “ have traded their silks for meats, their kisses/ for bolts on the doors, the curves/ of their hips for a place to carve out/ the names of the dead. ” González, a professor of English at Rut gers, is candid about the psychic damage done to a child who had to maintain a se cret, who knew that male-male affection “ wasn ’ t make-believe ” even as he had to hide it from the gaze of others. While he still lives with the deep emotional wounds of his earlier closeted life — the “ frock of scars and bruises ”— he resolutely declares his resilience and endurance: “ You are/ solid rock, ” he proclaims. And he is not im mune to moments of beauty in the world: the beautiful monarch butterflies in his na tive Michoacán or the “ magic of a child/ who can bite into a cherry and roll the world inside his mouth. ” There are poems about the beauty of the body ( “ my left nip

In her first book, The Off-Season, JenLevitt described feeling askew in the world and trying to imagine an openly lesbian life. So Long expands the self-scrutiny with evoca tive riffs on loss, including the death of a beloved father and the abrupt departure of a romantic partner. Felt loss becomes poetry in distinctly observed everyday encounters. Levitt teaches high school in New York City, and the title poem “ SoLong ” depicts trips to Connecticut to be with her seriously ill father. When he dies just shy of eighty, she is devastated, but different sentiments come into play, as multiple meanings of the phrase “ so long ” suggest. On the one hand, the phrase recalls the finality of Woody Guthrie ’ s 1935 Dust Bowl ballad, while, on the other hand, a casual “ so long ” maymean only brief separation. Alternatively, the words can evoke amazement, as when the writer tells her (by then deceased) father: “ Soon,we ’ ll have to find another way to meet, as moonlight/ makes the river glow, & look how lucky I ’ ve been, for so long. ” Levitt brings other people into her poems by reflecting on her roles as daughter, lover, sister, aunt, teacher, and friend. “ Letter to My Father from Provincetown, ” for exam ple, recalls seaside summers when her fa ther taught his children to play poker. In the poem “ Dunes, ” the writer struggles with the brisk unravelling of a passionate affair but

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